A Quiz About a Lot of "Just Stuff"

Answer: True

Remember the old song - "26 Miles Across the Sea"? In 1975, the Wrigley family transferred 85 percent of the island to the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to preserving and protecting open spaces, wild lands and nature preserves. That, of course, meant that what was wild on Catalina would remain wild and that included a large herd of buffalo.

The settlement was called Avalon and it has very little room for expansion, so essentially what you see is all you're going to get.

Answer: False

Many still believe He was born in a wooden stable, but that's not true. Caves were used to house animals because they retained heat. A church is now built over the cave, and people can go inside. The carpenters of Jesus' day were mainly stonecutters as wood was not used as widely as it is today. So around Christmas when you see a nativity scene that has a wooden stable, keep in mind that's the "Westernised" version and not the Biblical one.

Answer: False

Cows have only one stomach that contains four compartments. The first and largest is called the paunch or rumen. The second compartment of a cow's stomach may be called the bonnet, king's-hood or reticulum. The third is the omasum, psalterium, manyplies, bible, fardel or fardel-bag and the fourth is the abomasum, maw, read or rennet-bag.
Now that we have suffered through this, did you know that a cow can be identified by its nose-print? No?
Well, did you know that in 1841, 737 cows were milked in order to make a nine ft. diameter cheese for Queen Victoria?
It is said that in Moscow circuses, cows have been trained to play soccer. I wonder what color shirts they wore?

Answer: Yes

Though lesser known, it is called the Aurora Australis.
Have you ever seen the green flash as the sun sets? This happens because the atmosphere bends green light more strongly than light of other colors.
Do you like rainbows? Did you know that one can only be seen in the morning or late afternoon? It's a phenomenon that only can occur when the Sun is 40 degrees or lower above the horizon. When viewed from above, rainbows are doughnut shaped. According to Greek mythology, the goddess of the rainbows was Iris.
Have you seen a mirage? One appears in the Straits of Messina, between Sicily and Italy. It is an image of a town in the sky, but it seems more like a fairy landscape than a real town. It is believed to be a mirage of a fishing village situated along the coast.

Answer: It's landed on more than any other property.

I'm sure this was a computerized analysis but it's beyond me how one property can be landed on more than another. A little Monopoly trivia for you: In 1975, twice as much Monopoly money as real money was printed in the United States. The longest game ever played lasted l,680 hours (70 days).

The world's record for the longest game played on the back of a fire truck is 101 hours. There must be a moral to all this somewhere. If you think of one, let me know.

Answer: False

In fact, they were "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." The last words spoken on the Moon during the Apollo space program were "America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow." (Eugene Cernan, December 11, 1972)

Answer: All of these

In "Beasts in my Belfry" (1973), Gerald Durrell referred to such behavior as "a soothing and interesting habit to pass the time until the next meal." "Applied Animal Behavior Science", Volume 33 showed that bears are still alert to unusual smells on their stereotyped paths.

There was a polar bear named "Gus" who lived at the Central Park Zoo in New York City. He developed this sterotypic swimming behavior in 1994 and an animal psychologist was employed at the cost of $25,000 to devise a course of therapy. By delivering his food wrapped and at irregular times, and giving him play things laced with peanuts and honey, the therapist managed to rekindle the bear's interest in life.

It still took time though. After a year, his compulsive swimming was down only by a third - but at least he had stopped being mean to his female companions.

Answer: Potato

In October, 1995, the potato became the first vegetable to be grown in space. It was part of a NASA and University of Wisconsin project. They were looking for ways to feed astronauts and space colonies.
Do you remember in 1992 when our U.S. Vice President, Dan Quayle, misspelled "potato" as "potatoe"? He even had the audacity to do it at a school in Trenton, New Jersey. According to an old folk remedy, carrying potatoes in your pocket can cure or prevent rheumatism.
In the film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", instant potato flakes were used for snowflakes.

Answer: True

Jesse, his identical twin brother died at birth. Just think if we had TWO of them! Elvis made one television commercial and it was for Southern Maid Doughnuts in 1954. His only line was "You get 'em piping hot after 4 a.m." He had a pet chimp named "Scatter" who developed a real taste for scotch whiskey and bourbon. His last words were "OK, I won't" - spoken to his girlfriend of the moment Ginger Alden. There are still those who believe Elvis to be alive.

Source: elvis.com

Answer: Happy Birthday

"White Christmas" is actually number five. "Tea for Two" is number two and "Moon River" is number three. "Over the Rainbow" is number four, "Hello, Dolly" is number six, "As Time Goes By" is number seven, "Blue Moon" is number eight, "Rhapsody in Blue" is number nine and "Night and Day" is number ten.

Answer: Chips (Crisps)

Chocolate bars came in second, fresh fruit was third and the sandwich was fourth. My favorite, popcorn, was not even on the list. Get ready for this one! A survey in the 1980s reported that 44 percent of American children preferred television over Daddy. People in the UK over four years of age spend an average of 26 hours per week watching TV - that's 11 years in an average lifetime.

There might be a moral here as well. Any ideas?

Answer: False

Let's all have a glass of Dom Perignon. The monk by this name was from a Benedictine abbey in the region of Champagne in northern France. On sipping the first results of his double fermented wine, he, reportedly, is said to have called out "Come quickly, brother, I am tasting the stars." It appears that this is not true as the quote was seen for the first time in an advertisement in the 1800's.

The person that should be credited for producing the first champagne is Christopher Merret, an English doctor and scientist.

He "invented" champagne more than 30 years before Perignon's work. He died in 1715.

Answer: Red

They called it the red telephone, but in actuality the original apparatus was an old teleprinter which was an electromechanical device similar in appearance to a typewriter for transmitting the written word between two points via simple electrical wire.

The leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union agreed that they should find a means to speak directly and immediately to each other. The line was made available with no interference other than by the interpreters at any time of day. Up to that point, there had been a real danger of accidental nuclear war being triggered by deputies while the leaders were unable to contact each other.

A real telephone was not installed until 1970.

Answer: True

The clinical trials failed to show any benefits for those suffering with angina but reports showed that the drug had a marked side effect of inducing very strong sexual arousal in the male subjects participating in the clinical trials. Viagra became available in the United States in l998 and in the UK in 1999. Within three years of being launched, sales of Viagra had topped $1 billion worldwide.

Answer: Mickey and Minnie Mouse

So the story goes, Walt Disney was traveling back by train to his studio in California, having fallen out with his financial backers in New York. They had withdrawn financial support and had taken back Oswald the Rabbit, a character that had been copyrighted to them. To fill in time on his long journey, Disney sketched a new rabbit cartoon character but then changed it to a mouse.

He called it Mortimer. His wife thought that the name Mortimer was too stuffy so she rechristened him Mickey Mouse.